William Krueger: Boundary waters

Schanno sat at the desk Cork had occupied for almost eight years himself. Too much time had passed for Cork to feel any antipathy toward the man who’d taken his place. Schanno was about one gray hair shy of retirement anyway. He was a Lutheran, staunch Republican, and not a bad sheriff. A big man, he wore special-order shoes, had huge hands with long crooked fingers. At the moment he was dressed in a white shirt, gray pants, black suspenders. He looked tired, but he often looked that way. His wife Arletta suffered from Alzheimer’s, and between his duty to the voters and his duty to his wife, Schanno had those huge hands of his more than full.

He waved Cork in like an impatient cop directing traffic. “Close the door behind you.”

“Good evening to you, too, Wally,” Cork said.

Three men were in the office with Schanno. Two were black, one white. They wore suits, although a couple of them had their coats off, ties loosened, sleeves rolled back. The windows were closed. The air in the office was warm, a little rank from the sweat of worried men. They’d been huddled in front of a map taped to Schanno’s wall. When Cork came in, they turned. He felt their eyes go over every inch of him, but their faces registered about as much emotion as if he were nothing but a draft of air.

The tallest of the men was the first to move toward Cork and offer his hand.

“Mr. O’Connor, Special Agent in Charge Booker T. Harris. FBI. I appreciate your coming.”

Like the deep measured tone of his voice, his handshake was firm and purposeful. A man used to command. His hair was short and for the most part black, although gray had begun to flair along his temples. His skin was light, like maple wood.

“Agent Harris,” Cork said, and nodded.

Harris turned to the nearest of the others, a man whose skin was dark brown with just a hint of red, like cinnamon tea. “This is Special Agent Sloane.”

Sloane reminded Cork of a linebacker he knew in college, a man low to the ground and solid. But if Sloane had indeed played football, his best games were thirty years behind him. Much of his muscle had gone to fat, although there was still a lot of power visible in his big chest and shoulders. Cork and Agent Sloane exchanged a decent handshake. The man’s eyes were a liquid brown and tired. His sleeves were rolled back and his huge forearms were covered with white scar tissue like long scratches on mahogany.

“And Special Agent Grimes.”

Grimes was lean and grinning. He had red-brown hair in a military crew cut, a jawbone sharp as a machete, blue-white eyes like hot steel, a calloused hand. His face carried the tan and sharp creases of a man who spent a lot of time in the sun.

“Have a seat,” Schanno said.

Cork sat down and looked carefully at the map taped to the wall. A topographic map of the Boundary Waters.

“I’ll get right to the point, O’Connor,” Harris said. He leaned back easily against Schanno’s desk, in a pose that made the office seem familiar to him, as if the space had very quickly become his personal territory. “The sheriff has assured me you’re a man who can be trusted. We’ve got a problem on our hands, and we’re going to need your cooperation.”

“Go on,” Cork said.

Harris reached into a briefcase on the floor, pulled out a folded tabloid newspaper, and handed it to Cork. The major headline read $10,000 REWARD! It appeared above a huge color photo of the woman called Shiloh. The photograph was the kind anyone-man or woman-would have begged to have burned. Shiloh’s skin was bright and oily, her eyes angry, her face twisted in a snarling remark in the instant the glare of the flash had caught her. She looked positively demented, nothing like the soft CD cover Arkansas Willie Raye had shown him

that afternoon. Beneath the photo the caption read HELP US FIND SHILOH AND YOU POCKET TEN GRAND!

“It’s a gimmick,” Harris said. “This rag’s been updating the world on Shiloh sightings ever since she dropped out a couple of months ago. New York City, Paris, Sante Fe, Graceland. We have reason to believe this woman is, in fact, somewhere up here, O’Connor.”

“What reason?” Cork asked. He returned the paper to Harris.

“Good reason,” Harris said, and let it drop.

“All right,” Cork said. “Assuming she is up here, what do you want with me?”

“We know she was guided into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness some time ago by an Indian. We need to identify this man so that we can locate her. Sheriff Schanno believes you can help us with that.”

The room was too warm. Cork wanted to tell Wally Schanno to open a window, let in some cool evening air and let out the smell of the worry.

“You say she dropped from sight,” Cork said. “Voluntarily?”

“Yes. We’ve spoken with her publicist and her manager. They both say the move was her choice but that they don’t know anything more. She was apparently very secretive about the whole thing and very sudden.”

“Then why look for her? Seems to me if she wants privacy, she’s entitled to it.”

“We have our reasons,” Harris replied.

“Good reasons,” Cork finished for him. He stood as if to leave. “Gentlemen, it’s been interesting, but you’re on your own.”

“This is a federal investigation, O’Connor,” Harris warned him.

“So take me to court.”

“Look, if you want his help, tell him what’s going on,” Schanno broke in. “Just be straight with him.”

Harris gave Schanno a sharp look, considering the advice as if it were about as enticing to him as a spoonful of sulfur. His eyes flicked toward the other two agents, and they appeared to have a wordless conference. Harris gave a grudging nod. “Okay, the Bureau’s interest in this case, and its jurisdiction, comes from the RICO statute. You know what that is?”

“Sure. Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. How does that tie in with the woman in the Boundary Waters.”

“Fifteen years ago, this woman, Shiloh, was the only witness to her mother’s murder.”

“We all know that,” Cork said, and he sat back down. “Her mother was a local.”

“Then you probably also know that she’s always claimed she couldn’t remember what happened that night. Post-traumatic amnesia. Not unheard of. A few months ago, she was ordered by the court to undergo treatment for substance abuse. She’s been seeing a psychiatrist named Patricia Sutpen. You may have heard of her. Lots of famous clients. Been on Oprah. Her psychological bag of tricks includes regression therapy. We believe that in the course of her treatment, Shiloh may have finally recalled the events of the night her mother died.”

Harris picked up the tabloid from where it lay on top of Schanno’s desk and slapped it down, hard.

“This piece of trash appeared a couple of weeks ago. Almost immediately, the reporter-if you can call anyone who stoops to this kind of journalism a reporter-in charge of this story gets a call from a woman named Elizabeth Dobson. She’s a studio musician for Shiloh. Plays the violin.”

“In country music, they call it a fiddle,” Grimes put in quietly and with a grin.

“Whatever.” Harris waved it off and went on.

“Elizabeth Dobson claims to have letters from Shiloh. Claims that not only do they tell where she is, but they contain some pretty juicy revelations as well. The reporter arranges to meet her at a restaurant in Santa Monica. She doesn’t show. He gets her address from the phone book, goes to her apartment, but gets no answer to his knock. He greases the building manager’s palm, they open her door, and find her lying dead on the living-room rug. Strangled. It appears to be a burglary, lots of stuff missing. Including the letters she claims to have had. LAPD, while investigating, stumbles onto a diary Elizabeth Dobson kept right up to the day she died. Entries indicated that Shiloh was somewhere in the Boundary Waters. She was being supplied by a man she referred to only as-uh-”